Machines commonly used to gather trash, debris and other articles off of the ground generally have consisted of a wheel unit, a support frame mounted on the wheel unit, having a drawbar for towing the machine by a tractor or other vehicle, a receptacle mounted on the support frame and an endless conveyor assembly for picking up articles off of the ground, conveying them rearwardly and depositing them in the mounted receptacle which is adapted to be emptied at a selected site. Often, such machines are used to clean sandy beaches strewn with trash and debris. Such machines, however, have been found to be less than entirely effective in providing an economically manufactured machine capable of readily gathering articles strewn on the ground, usually with a certain amount of earth particles, separating the articles to be collected from the earth particles and then capturing all of the collected articles in a receptacle. A further problem with such prior art machines has been in disposing of the collected articles.
It thus is the principal object of the present invention to provide an improved machine for gathering articles strewn on the ground which is comparatively inexpensive to manufacture and operate, efficient an operation and highly effective in gathering articles off of the ground. It is a further object of the present invention to provide such an improved machine which functions to cleanly separate such earth particles from the articles being gathered, and capturing such gathered articles in a receptacle for further disposition. A still further object of the present invention is to provide such an improved machine which will accommodate commonly used, stand alone refuse bins, equipped with wheels, which may be removably mounted on such machines and filled with trash or debris gathered by such machines, readily removed from such machines and positioned at selected sites, wheeled to vicinities of trash collecting vehicles and emptied into such vehicles.